Meeting the Demands for Major International Traffic Flows through Railnet Austria's Maintenance and Capacity Planning Regime

Serving as a strategic crossing point for major corridors in Central Europe, Railnet Austria's Infrastructure Network incurs continual increases in international traffic flows and is therefore subject to accumulating traffic congestion with potential restrictions to infrastructure access. This imposes challenges towards preserving open access to Railnet Austria's existing railway network and hinders quality infrastructure service during maintenance, repair, and upgrading. Through Railnet Austria's experiences, the economic viability of a railway network can be sustained through maintaining open access with good quality service of planned trainpaths, thus representing new challenges for future infrastructure maintenance and capacity planning. Railnet Austria's Capacity Management Department has proven that these challenges can be accommodated more effectively through recent technological developments in data warehousing and software development.